two, someone else was coming up with the same great idea:
I know this guy who is the male version of you! You have to meet Ferris Bueller!
They said that amazing things just happened when he was around, because he imagined them and then willed them into existence through personality alone. The stories about him were more epic with every telling. I had a boyfriend, but one I was torn about. And Ferris represented the possibility of being untorn, of being blissfully, 100 percent signed-sealed-delivered. And so I wondered.
So there I was, trying to forget about Ferris, thesummer that Sasha got married. It’s hard to overstate how much Sasha getting married affected me. Aside from the fact that she was yet another friend going in a direction I was starting to fear I would never want to go, she was my partner in crime, my sister, my wild, funny, adventurous friend who helped teach me how to be wild and funny and adventurous.
And it wasn’t just what was going on with Sasha’s life that hit me in the face that weekend. Sasha’s wedding weekend was one of those real-life moments that, if it were in a movie, would feel trite and convenient. She got married in New York, and also invited were Hope and our friend Ann, whose parents were a second family to me growing up. Ann had grown into a calm, organized lawyer who calmly married her college boyfriend and was now calmly nine months pregnant with the first baby any of our friends had produced. Hope was wildly depressed, and in the middle of an awful divorce from that boy she brought with us to Amsterdam, the one who snuck off to the sex show without her. And I was there with Ben … struggling with what I wanted to do next. We were a
Sex and the City
quartet: one marrying, one divorcing, one trying to decide if she’s in love, one giving birth.
On the day of the wedding, Ann gave birth a few blocks away from the ceremony at precisely the moment Sasha said “I do,” while Hope rolled her eyes at the promises of “forever,” and I wept at losing my single buddy. Not those emotional, joyful, smiley wedding tears you shed because you’re so happy. Big, heaving sobs of genuine grief sprang out of me as I stood under the chuppah, watching a personwho felt like a piece of myself walk toward me, while somehow really walking away.
By the end of the weekend, I had lost my best girl. And when I got home, the old panic about Ben and my readiness to settle down continued. And so, after a tremendous amount of soul-searching, and self-created misery, and pro/con lists, I broke up with him again. Because … well … because. That’s what I do. It sort of had something to do with the way he grocery-shopped. So … because of me.
I tortured myself
a lot.
I wept
a lot.
I doubted my decision
a lot.
I sat in my backyard crying to Sasha and her new husband, Jared.
“Why are you crying when
you
broke up with
him
?”
“Because I’m broken! He’s great! And Trevor was great! I’m getting older, I should want to settle down! But I don’t want to! Maybe I won’t ever want to! Everyone else wants to, what’s wrong with me? Maybe I’ll sabotage all relationships forever because I’m broken!”
And they would assure me that I wasn’t broken. That Trevor and I just weren’t a match. Sasha’s husband wrote me an actual guarantee on which he staked
ten thousand dollars
that I would meet a man I wanted to marry within the next five years.
“
Five years?!
” I wailed.
“You said you weren’t ready yet.”
“But I should be ready in sooner than
five years
!”
“I’m sure it will be sooner. I just want to make sure I don’t lose the bet,” he replied.
A few years ago, I found the guarantee, and saw thatJared’s marriage-guarantee date had passed years before, and cried again. He owes me ten thousand dollars to this day.
S o it was while in this place that, out of the blue, I finally met Ferris. He just walked into a restaurant and sat down at my table.
I was at a
I know this guy who is the male version of you! You have to meet Ferris Bueller!
They said that amazing things just happened when he was around, because he imagined them and then willed them into existence through personality alone. The stories about him were more epic with every telling. I had a boyfriend, but one I was torn about. And Ferris represented the possibility of being untorn, of being blissfully, 100 percent signed-sealed-delivered. And so I wondered.
So there I was, trying to forget about Ferris, thesummer that Sasha got married. It’s hard to overstate how much Sasha getting married affected me. Aside from the fact that she was yet another friend going in a direction I was starting to fear I would never want to go, she was my partner in crime, my sister, my wild, funny, adventurous friend who helped teach me how to be wild and funny and adventurous.
And it wasn’t just what was going on with Sasha’s life that hit me in the face that weekend. Sasha’s wedding weekend was one of those real-life moments that, if it were in a movie, would feel trite and convenient. She got married in New York, and also invited were Hope and our friend Ann, whose parents were a second family to me growing up. Ann had grown into a calm, organized lawyer who calmly married her college boyfriend and was now calmly nine months pregnant with the first baby any of our friends had produced. Hope was wildly depressed, and in the middle of an awful divorce from that boy she brought with us to Amsterdam, the one who snuck off to the sex show without her. And I was there with Ben … struggling with what I wanted to do next. We were a
Sex and the City
quartet: one marrying, one divorcing, one trying to decide if she’s in love, one giving birth.
On the day of the wedding, Ann gave birth a few blocks away from the ceremony at precisely the moment Sasha said “I do,” while Hope rolled her eyes at the promises of “forever,” and I wept at losing my single buddy. Not those emotional, joyful, smiley wedding tears you shed because you’re so happy. Big, heaving sobs of genuine grief sprang out of me as I stood under the chuppah, watching a personwho felt like a piece of myself walk toward me, while somehow really walking away.
By the end of the weekend, I had lost my best girl. And when I got home, the old panic about Ben and my readiness to settle down continued. And so, after a tremendous amount of soul-searching, and self-created misery, and pro/con lists, I broke up with him again. Because … well … because. That’s what I do. It sort of had something to do with the way he grocery-shopped. So … because of me.
I tortured myself
a lot.
I wept
a lot.
I doubted my decision
a lot.
I sat in my backyard crying to Sasha and her new husband, Jared.
“Why are you crying when
you
broke up with
him
?”
“Because I’m broken! He’s great! And Trevor was great! I’m getting older, I should want to settle down! But I don’t want to! Maybe I won’t ever want to! Everyone else wants to, what’s wrong with me? Maybe I’ll sabotage all relationships forever because I’m broken!”
And they would assure me that I wasn’t broken. That Trevor and I just weren’t a match. Sasha’s husband wrote me an actual guarantee on which he staked
ten thousand dollars
that I would meet a man I wanted to marry within the next five years.
“
Five years?!
” I wailed.
“You said you weren’t ready yet.”
“But I should be ready in sooner than
five years
!”
“I’m sure it will be sooner. I just want to make sure I don’t lose the bet,” he replied.
A few years ago, I found the guarantee, and saw thatJared’s marriage-guarantee date had passed years before, and cried again. He owes me ten thousand dollars to this day.
S o it was while in this place that, out of the blue, I finally met Ferris. He just walked into a restaurant and sat down at my table.
I was at a
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